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“Jekyll-Hyde Life of Schrank, Roosevelt’s Assassin, Revealed--Student of Herr Johann Most, Anarchist
ONCE THREATENED THE JUDGE WHO HAD RULED AGAINST HIM IN SUIT
T. R. BETTER. BUT
NIUSTREMAININ
HDSPiTALBED
Colonel’s Condition Continues
to Improve. But He Can’t Go
Home Before Mnday.
>
t
Continued From Page One.
buoyed up by the exigencies of the sit
uation. and tli ‘.e is fear tn some direc
tions that she may be ill after till pos.H
tele danger has been removed in M:
Roosevelt’s wise. but the doctors ate
watching her very closely and she is
compelled to sleep, although anxious to
remain perpetually on watch,
• Mrs. Longworth and Theodore Roose
velt, Jr., planned to take their mother
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tor a motor ride through the parks to
day.
“Few Men of Such
C aliber in Any Land’
LONDON. Oct. 17. "The Heroic
mold" is the title under which Tho
Pail Mall Gazette voices its com
ment upon the attempted assassination
of Theodore Roosevelt and high tribute
was paid to the wounded American. It
said'
"Not only the American people, but
the civilized world will rejoice at the
escape of Colonel Roosevelt from the
maniacal attack which has befallen
him. The amazing and characteristic
coolness with which the ex-president
bore the assault and it< consequences
must touch every instinct which re
sponds to chivalry and self-control,
"The picture of a statesman insisting
on proceeding with his address, with
a bullet freshly imbedded in his breast,
is almost too staggeringly dramatic for
our British ideas to comprehend. We
have not the atmosphere of new , hetreo
genous, uncouth democracy which
would create such an inspiration.
"But Colonel Roosevelt knows his
people, and he believes he is fighting a
battle of character against corruption
and his instinct told him that the
chance had come to give the world as
surance of a man, .ind Roosevelt Is a
man. let us take what views we may
of hie methods, his temperament'or of
his opinions. Tfir movement of which
he has become the head r< presents the
craving of th? American people for
honesty, courage and decisive govern
ment in their affairs. They need a
Hercules to eban the Augean stables
of their politics and to cut the bonds
which strangle both government and
justice.
"The scene which shows Colonel
Roosevelt first protecting his would-be
slayer and then proceeding with his
unstaunched wound to deliver his ad
dress will be stamped' deeply upon the
retina of his countrymen. There are
few men in any land of such caliber,
and we may be sure that many thou
sands who had intended bestow ing their
suffrages elsewhere w ill now ask them
selves if it is well to pass him by."
EXQUISITE wedding bouquets
and decorations.
V Call Main IPO.
(Advertisement.)
Would-Be Slayer a Peaceful Property Owner at
Times and Maniac at Others.
NEW YORK, Oct. 17. —John Schrank,
who tried-to assassinate ex-Pr . sldent
Roosevelt In Milwaukee Monday even
ing. was in his early days in this coun
try an ardent admirer of Herr Most, the
anarchistic Socialist. When Most was
arrested and sent to Blackwell s Island
a few years ago, Schrank became his
open and ardent disciple, pieaching in
St. Marks place on "The Rights of the
Downtrodden.” When Most died
Schrank tried to start a fund for a
monument to -the anarchist.
In the lunch room at the White House
hotel at No. Ink canal street, where
Schrank lived for a time, were found
photographs of Presidents Lincoln,
Garfield. McKinley and Roosevelt.
At “The Homestead,” No. 14S Cooper
street. Brooklyn, where Schrank lived
for several years, he never ceased ta
yj®it : '■ ■ w
B r 'AAA iW;U
talk about President McKinley and his
assassination. It was the one subject
which always opened Schrank's gloom
uttering mouth.
Until last January Schrank seemed to
have plenty of money , having inherited
the entire estate of his uncle, Dominick
Flammang. But lust February he went
to work as lunchman and porter in a
Brooklyn saloon for $9 a week. After
four weeks’ work he quit and then sued
the saloon keepers for sll. When Judge
Strahl decided the case against him
Schrank wrote him a threatening let
ter, in which he told Judge Strahl that
he was “the oppressor of the poor peo
ple and a rich man's judge," and that
he (Schrank) had been "appointed” to
even the poor people's score against
Judge Strahl.
In Schrank's quarters were a numbe-'
of cartoons from various anarchistic
and Socialistic organs tending to show
that "this is a rich man’s country,” “A
poor man can not get justice here,"
"Down with the rich," and many others
of that nature on which Schrank fed
his eyes daily.
Sole Heir of Aunt.
Schrank was the nephew of Mrs.
Dominick Flammang. The Flammangs
executed a joint will on February 28,
1906. which not only made Schrank the
executor of their estate, but also their
sole heir. This will was admitted to
probate by Surrogate Cohalan on March
17, 1911. Dominick Flammang having
died on February 5 1911, two years
after hfs wife's demise.
Part of the property conveyed to
Schrank upon the death of Dominick
Flamming, who was better known un
der the Americanized spelling of Flem
ing. was the five-story tenement house
at No. 433 East Eighty-first street.
Schrank stated in Milwaukee that in a
valise left at a Charleston, S. C„ hotel
could be found the deed to this house,
and that It was valued at $25,00.
A search of the records in the tax
department has showed that the prop
erty is still listed under the name of
Dominick Flammang. The property is
appraised at $19,000 and carries a mort
gage of $13,000, taken out on December
19. 1908, with the Title Guarantee and
Trust Company.
It has been learned that the interest
payments on this mortgage had always
been made promptly by a John Flam
innng. who gave his address as No. 148
Cooper street Brooklyn. Neither the
tax office nor the Title Guarantee and
Trust Company has ever had any deal
ings with John Schrank under that
name, although the Eighty-first street
THE ATLANTA GEORGIAN AND NEWS. THURSDAY. OCTOBER 17. 1912.
premises became his property upon the
probating of Dominick Flammang's will.
Schrank Is “John Flammang.”
A visit by a reporter to the Cooper
street address of John Flammang” dis
closed the fact that he and John
Schrank were the same person. There
Is a three-story hotel there, known as
“The Homestead," and its proprietors
are two brothers, Herman and John
Laninger. Herman Laninger said he
knew Schrank well. He outlined some
interesting details of the life in Brook
lyn of Colonel Roosevelt's assailant.
"Schrank was always a fine fellow
around here,” said Herman Laninger.
"He spent much time In what we call
the public room, a part of the barroom.
He never drank to excess and always
seemed tractable and friendly enough
with those that frequented the room. He
lived with us for two or three years up
to last January, and always paid his
rent promptly.
"When Schrank left here last Janu
ary he left a valise in which were sev
eral papers. Later on he returned here
—it was in February, I think—and left
some more papers. These papers have
been taken to police headquarters in
Brooklyn.
"Some of these papers that 1 know
of were deeds to various pieces of prop
erty, probably some of the property he
Inherited from his uncle, Dominick
Flammang: others related to certain
mortgages on these properties; still
others were letters, some in German and
some in English.
‘‘He Talked of McKinley.”
"Although Schrank was a very quiet
man in his demeanor, he always talked
a great deal of President McKinley. He
seemed to regret that President Mc-
Kinley had been assassinated as some
thing that he himself could have obvi
ated. He was an ardent admirer of
McKinley. He would talk about him
when no other subject of conversation
could start him going.
"Last February he came to me and
told me he was in financial straits, that
his business affairs had gone very bad
ly. So he said he would have to go to
work at whatever offered itself. He
answered a newspaper advertisement
for a saloon lunch man. The saloon
was at No. 246 Flushing avenue, in the
Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. It
is kept by Edward Havestroh and The
odore Thurmann,
"The last time I saw him was in
September, a little over a month ago.
He told me he had just borrowed $350
from a friend, but he did not tell me
what he was going to do, except that
he lufd to go away. He told me he had
been working as a translator on a
German newspaper, and w«s living at
No. 156 Canal street.
. "At that time he appointed me bis
rent collector for the tenement house at
No. 433 East Eighty-first street, which
he said his uncle had left him. The
ren's from that house amount to $l4B a
month.
Not Known as a Voter.
"Schrank never seemed to me to be
a man who would harm anybody. All
of his friends here were very much
startled to think that he had shot Colo,
nel Roosevelt.’ Why, it was utterly Un
like anything we had ever dreamed of
him. He was never an ardent admirer
of any particular candidate, and. so
far as I know, he never registered or
ROOSEVELT AT MERCY AOSPITAL
Mm! i r: ■c. ■a i\
/
Drawing showing Colonel Roosevelt, recovering from an as
sassin's buleet wound, reading in his bed at Mercy hospital, Chi
cago, with his nurse and physician keeping watch.
voted. He did not talk Socialism over
here at all."
A visit to the Flushing avenue saloon
of Havestroh & Thurmann brought out
a number of the peculiarities of
Schrank and his inability to stand
any kind of discipline. Thurmann told
a reporter his personal experiences
with Schrank.
"We got this man Schrank through
an advertisement. He started as lunch
man at $9 a week, worked a week at
that, then we made him a waiter, and
then, because he was too stupid or
clumsy to be a waiter, we made him
lunchman again. He worked for us un
til about March 1.
"On March 1 he came to me and said
he wanted his money and would quit
the job, as he was disgusted with it.
He said we were knuckling him down,
and a poor man did not have even a
fair chance to earn a living.
"When he came to our place he was
apparently down and out. In fact, he
said he was all in, that he didn't have
a penny, and simply had to go to work
at anything he could got, although he
was used to mental effort rather than
physical. He tried to make us under
stand that he was a person in re
duced circumstances wno deserved a
great deal more from this world than
he had got.
Thought Him a Weakling.
"I always thought Schrank was a
weakling. Os course, I did not look
into his antecedents. You don’t have
to do that for a lunchman or waiter.
But 1 figured it out that there must be
a crazy streak in his family some
where. We took pity on him when he
fell down on his Job here and let him
stay and fed him for a wuple of days
beyond his time to quit.
"But it got so that we just had to
turn him out. He was very abusive
finally; he said we were grinding the
lives out of our employees, and that
kind of stuff. I wanted to hit him, but
he was such a weakling I did not have
the heart to do it.
"After he had left us maybe two or
three days he came around one morn
ing and said to tne: 'I want that sll
you owe me.’ I did not know what he
was talking about. 1 said: 'We don't
owe you any sll or any other money.
Get out of here.’
“ 'Oh. yes, you do.' he said, ‘you hired
me for $9 a week and ow e me $2 more
for allowances, and I want that extra
«'f ek’s wages and the $2 more.’ 'Get
out of here, and get out while the going
is good,’ I told him. He left, muttering,
and saying he was going to sue us.
Judge Threw Out Case.
“Sure enough, he went on March 4 to
the municipal court on Gates avenu-’
and by swearing he was not worth more
than SIOO he got a 'free summons’ for
Havestroh and me. He sued us for the
sll he Had demanded from me. He got
two summonses, and he served one of
them on me, but he never served Have
stroh."
The unserved summons for Have
stroh was found yesterday by the po
lice in the pocket of an old ,-uit of
Schrank's clothes in his former quar
ters at No. 156 '/anal street. It helped
Inspector Faurot's men to tiail
Schrank's movements in part, which
they did in answer to a request of that
nature from Chief of Police Thompson,
of Milwaukee.
“The case was set down by Judge
Jacob F. Strahl for March 28," Thur
mann said, "and after trial, in which
Schrank's conduct showed he was
either a crazy man or well on his way
to being one, Judge Strahl threw the
case out of court, deciding it in our
favor.”
Thurmann referred the reporter to
Harold A. Seaton, an attdbney at No.
373 Fulton street, Brooklyn, in whose
charge the saloon keeper's ease had
been. Mr. Seaton told of Schrank’s
frequent visits to his office in an at
tempt to force a settlement of his suit.
“Schrank is certainly crazy," Mr.
Seaton said. "He got his summons re
turnable on March 14 and then the trial
was set for March 28. Well, in those
two weeks he almost pestered me and
my employees to death. He also fright
ened my stenographer so badly I could
hardly keep her in the office for fear
ARMLESS MAN FIGHTS
BUFFALO POLICEMAN
BCEFALO, N. Y.. Oct. 17.—Two hun
dred persons watched artnless William
Kirby battle with Patrolman Eugene F.
Downey for fifteen minutes in front of
the Lackawanna railroad station before he
was arrested. The struggle took place
after Kirby had run two blocks with a
basket of grapes weighing 40 pounds in
his teeth.
He was charged with stealing the
grapes.
“MISS”~fo BE REFUSED
TO NEW YORK DIVORCEES
NEW YORK, Oct. 17.—Judge King
declaies that in except extreme cases he
will refus * to permit divorcees to re
sume the "Miss" before their names. It’s
likely to fool the men. he said.
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that Schrank would do her bodily harm.
"He would come around, sometimes as
many as three times a day, and yell at
me, 'I want this case settled. I want
my money. I'll get that sll or you’ll be
the worse for it.’ He seemed fearful ;.t
that time that the ease would be de
cided against him.
"Well, I finally got pretty tired of
having him come in that way and caus
ing such turmoil. So I told him one
day that*if I ever saw him around the
place again I would not only kick him
out, but would have him arrested and
see to it that he got a nice long sen
tence to a place where he could make
threats and speeches to his heart's con
tent. He never came into my office
again. ’
A visit to Judge Strahi's home was
productive of evidence that Schrank
was not seized with his first impulse to
do harm when he assailed Colonel
Roosevelt in Milwaukee Monday nigh*.
Three days after Judge Strahl had de
cided his case against him Schrank
wrote the judge a threatening letter.
"I remember this man Schrank very
well,” said Judge Strahl. “Not only
because of the wildness of his state
ments in the court room last March,
out because of the threatening letter he
wrote me, dated March 31. He sent It
to my house here, at No. 807 Putnam
avenue. That fact showed me that he
was really a potential 'bad man,’ be
cause he had gone to the trouble of
looking up my private address rather
than sending me the letter to the court
house address he already knew .
"This letter was not signed by
Schrank, but I knew It was from him
because of the handwriting and be
cause he mentioned certain facts that
nad occutred in the court room when I
heard his case. They were facts pecu
liar to his case, because in no other case
had 1 had so much trouble to keep a
complaining witness tied down to the
material facts.
“Miseducated,” Says Judge,
"I was not very much impressed by
Schrank in the court room. He seemed
to me at times to be very weak and at
others to be extremely arrogant. If I
may coin the word, he appeared to me
to be ‘miseducated,’ to be a man who
had misapplied all he had learned from
his books. He was undoubtedly of a
studious turn of mind.
BRYAN’S DAUGHTER TO
TALK FOR_SUFFRAGISTS
NEW YORK. Oct. 17.—William J.
Bryan's daughter, Mrs. Ruth Bryan
Owen, will begin a series of Monday
night woman sttffiage lectures here un
der the auspices of the Women's Polit
ical Equality league.
AIKU’S PEACE
HANGS ON 20 MEN
AUGUSTA, GA., Oct. 17.—1 t will be
known before this afternoon whether
Augusta’s street car strike is to end at
once or whether the men now striking
will remain out of the employ of the
company permanently.
The board of mediators submitted a
report last night to Chairman F. R
Pope, of the citizens meeting, in which
it i.s stated that all of the differences
had been reconciled except one, and
that is whether or not the carmen, as a
whole, shall all go back to work or
whether those under charges shall re
maiin suspended until a board of arbi
tration either reinstates them or de
clares them disqualified.
Th? carmen want all of the strikers
to go back, while the company con
tends that the men under charges, who,
it is alleged, helped to destroy th'
company's property during the strike
rioting, must not be reinstated until ■>
board of arbitration passes on their
eases. There are about 20 men under
charges.
If the strike is not brought to an eno
today, Colonel M. J. O'Leary probably
will ask that a regiment of troops be
sent here at once, and he will take
charge of the situation himself. Colo
nel O’Leary says that the cars must rur
if the company is not at fault, and thev
will be given ample protection. It i
not believed here that the carmen wii
yield on the point of a portion of the
men going back, and ag eneral sympa
thetic strike is threatened In the ever.'
the military take charge of the city.
KILLS SELF IN GRIEF
OVER WIFE’S SUICIDE
NEW YORK. Oct. 17.— Rudolp'•
Christman. a furrier, 32 years old. es
No. 1528 Hoe avenue, the Bronx, whos 1
wife hanged herself in a cell at ' . ■
East One Hundred and Twenty-six: i
street police station, after first having
tried to end her life by jumping in
front of an elevated railroad train, was
found dead in the kitchen of his apart
ment. He had shot himself twice in
the head.
AMERICAN DUCHESS TO
OPEN HOME FOR WOMEN
LONDON, Oct. 17.—1 t was announce]
today that for $104,000 the Duchess '
Marlborough has acquired Little Esuf
Place. In Esher, for the purpose of es
tablishing a home for women clerks anj
typists. The preparation of the home
is now in progress and it is expect -
be opened soon. Little Eshe: Place/"’'
merly was occupied by Lady I '
Baring e
Today at 2:30
VinAiMU Tonight at 8
Keith Vaudeville
VALERIE BERGERE AND HER CO
Howard A. Snow The Caberet Tr'O
Sampsell 4 Reilly The Havelocks
Mariano Bros. Joe Jacks
FORSYTH
LITTLE EMMA BUNTING
And Her Splendid Players
Present Barrie's Great Four-Act P >v
"THE LITT L E MI NI ST E R
Next Week "Little Lord Fauntleroy
i vmn TliIS WEEE
I I Kill Matinttt. Tutt- Thurt
“ I IIIU a nd Saturday ;
ENGAGEMENT EXTRAORD' N * RV
THE CALL OF THE HEART j
NEXT WEEK—"MADAM X"